Recipe for nettle soup

[luzula]

I posted the recipe for nettle soup in a comment; re-posting it here in case more people want to try it! To be clear, this is for Urtica dioica (the common nettle of Eurasia, which has apparently also spread to other continents) and I cannot speak for the edibility/taste of other nettle species.

Pick the nettles during the spring, by wearing gloves and using a scissors. Just take the top, so you don't have to weed out the stringy stems later. Wash them in water, then boil them in water for perhaps five minutes. If you have more nettles than fits in your pot, boil them in several batches, in the same water. Keep the water that you boiled in for later. Chop the nettles which are now soft and don't sting. Make a soup with vegetable stock and the water that you boiled the nettles in, and add chopped nettles, some chopped fried onions, some cream, a little thickening (flour), some black pepper and salt to taste. Eat with a boiled egg if you like.

Comments

[regshoe]

Thank you very much for the recipe, that does sound nice :D Hmm, I'll have to see if I can find a good patch of nettles—there used to be one at the bottom of the garden but I fear they've been strimmed away.

Your comment about nettle species made me realise I didn't actually know if there were any others round here. Having looked it up there is one other species in the same genus, the dwarf nettle U. urens, which is similar-looking but smaller (and is also edible); rather mysteriously, Wikipedia claims that it stings more strongly than U. dioica but my wildflower guide says it's less strong. Not sure I like to test it out to see which one is right...

(Another species in the same family, Soleirolia soleirolii, has the delightful common name Mind Your Own Business. So there you go!)

[luzula]

Yes, we also have U. urens, but I'm not sure if I've ever seen it. It's pretty rare, I think. And there's also the false nettle, Lamium album, which looks like a nettle when it's not in bloom, but isn't one...

(Another species in the same family, Soleirolia soleirolii, has the delightful common name Mind Your Own Business. So there you go!)
Hmm. When I look it up, that's a common potted plant in Sweden, but it doesn't sting, so why would it be Mind Your Own Business? We often call it "hemtrevnad".

[regshoe]

Oh yes, we have Lamium album too, white dead-nettle. Also red dead-nettle, L. purpureum, which looks much less like a stinging nettle.

Hmm. When I look it up, that's a common potted plant in Sweden, but it doesn't sting, so why would it be Mind Your Own Business? We often call it "hemtrevnad".

I don't know... I'm not familiar with it, so I don't know what else about it might inspire that name. Hemtrevnad, that's a lovely name (this plant is clearly much nicer in Swedish than in English!).

[feroxargentea]

I suspect it's called mind-your-own-business because it's so invasive if it's let loose in the garden, poking its nose in everywhere(?)

Also I can confirm that Urtica dioica and Urtica urens are both very stingy, but the former is perennial so you probably know where it's going to be each year, whereas the latter is annual and therefore pops up in unexpected places amongst other plants and gets you when you're not expecting it, so it's more prone to causing swearing! Dunno why Wiki doesn't include these important details :)

[regshoe]

That would make sense!

Ah, I see—it's all about expectations. Very important details :D

[luzula]

Also I can confirm that Urtica dioica and Urtica urens are both very stingy, but the former is perennial so you probably know where it's going to be each year, whereas the latter is annual and therefore pops up in unexpected places amongst other plants and gets you when you're not expecting it, so it's more prone to causing swearing!

Ah, that makes sense! : )

[garonne]

Sounds delicious! I've always wanted to try nettle soup. I'm not often in a place where I can find uncontaminated nettles, but maybe I will be sometime this summer.

[luzula]

I haven't tried them later in the year, but I would guess that they taste best in the spring! But yes, do try it if you can.

[regshoe]

I am eating this now! Very nice—thank you :D

[luzula]

Oh, I'm glad you tried it, and that you liked it! : )

[regshoe]

:) I'm having a bit of a wild foods weekend, I think—I added some garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) to boiled potatoes today, which was very tasty.

[luzula]

Ah yes, we have that one too (löktrav). I tried eating some hawthorn leaves the other day, by the way, but I can't say I liked them much? But probably they're better as an element in salad.

[regshoe]

Yes, I expect they would work well in a salad with stronger flavours—I haven't tried many things with them, I'll have to experiment!